While reading Ralph Martin’s A
Church in Crisis I encontered an endnote reference to a blog post by Fr.
Longenecker, which sheds light on the roots of contemporary secular befuddlement:
RELATIVISM,
IRRATIONAL RAGE AND REVOLUTION
One of the most disturbing aspects of the troubles of 2020 has been the confusion and bewilderment caused by so much uncertainty. When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic every other news report or social media link or comment has been contradictory. “Masks are useless. Everybody must wear a mask! Only sick old people will get this disease. My friend knows a guy in his forties who is an athlete and very fit and he nearly died! You can get it just from touching your groceries. The virus doesn’t transmit that way. The threat is global. Only New York City is being hit. Not us.”
We’ve seen the most amazing contradictions over
the last week with the massive demonstrations. We’re supposed to observe social
distancing, but thousands are encouraged to meet up and protest. There was one
instruction fro the authorities circulating that said: “Outdoor meetings for
social gatherings: no more than twelve people. Out door protests no more than
100” No wonder everybody is scratching their heads in not only bewilderment,
but confusion fear and anxiety.
What interests me about all this is how it is
reflective of the relativism in our society. For decades now some intellectuals
have been telling us there is “no such thing as truth” or “if there is such a
thing as truth you can’t know it for sure and you can’t state it with
certainty.” The attack on truth has especially been an attack on religious truth.
What no one seems to understand is the relationship between relativism,
irrational rage and violent revolution.
It’s not rocket science to figure out. It works
like this: if there is no such thing as truth, then all that remains as a
foundation for decision making is utilitarianism and sentimentality.
Utilitarianism is simply the philosophy that what works is best or what will
bring the most pleasure to the most people is best. I’ve written at length
about it here. Utilitarianism is what is most
efficient, most useful, most practical and effective. It has no deeper moral
sense or higher sense of good. Sentimentality is emotion–feelings. Without any
firm basis of authority the only criteria left for decision is sentimentality
and utilitarianism. These two are conditioned by propaganda. That is to say a
person’s sense of what is useful and good and their emotions are determined by
the people who teach them, the media they consume, the books they read and the
people to whom they listen.
The result of this combination of
sentimentality, utilitarianism and propaganda will be irrationality. People
will have a very loose grasp of knowledge, will not be able to synthesize
information in any coherent way and will paddle around in a shallow pool of
emotion, social media opinion, half formed ideas and notions–all of which are
coming at them from a whole range of sources of varying authenticity and
evidence. So a person’s ideas and emotions will be formed from a mishmash of
video games, comics, a philosophy course, a book on self help, a chat show
about self awareness, greeting cards, horror films, yesterday’s news and a
story their grandpa told them once.
Consequently we will see an increasing number of
people who simply have no idea about anything at all responding to world events
and their own circumstances like crazed animals–not having any idea of truth,
any idea of manners, any idea of good behavior, right thinking or common sense
at any level. Here’s an illustration of what I mean: a Tweet from some young
gal who thought Hitler was better than Winston Churchill because Churchill was
a heavy drinker, smoker, adulterer and racist. Hitler was a vegetarian,
faithful to his one partner and a non smoker, so although he was a racist too
he was a better racist than Churchill the racist. Such shallow lost sheep with
their irrationality are prime fodder for any revolutionary who comes along to
stoke their rage.
Where does rage come in? Well, the whole
relativism schtick is nice enough when everybody is indulging in nice emotions.
But we seem to forget that there are also some rather nasty emotions, and the
nice emotions are all well and good when the sun in shining, but when things
turn bad the nasty emotions rule the day. The rage is lurking just below the
surface. The snarls are right behind the smiles. The results of relativism are
that, (since there is no such thing as truth) everybody must simply be tolerant
of everybody else’s truth. The problem is that people simply can’t live that
way for long. They must have a truth to live for and a truth to fight for. If
they are right, then the other people must be wrong, and if it is good to be
right and bad to be wrong, then the wrong people must be bad people and good
people should defeat bad people.
Thus the irrational rage erupts in individual
hearts and in society. Furthermore, since it is irrational rage it will lead
people to do irrational things. So we see people protesting racism vandalizing
statues of Abraham Lincoln or we hear calls for the abolition of the police or
we hear the loud lament for George Floyd, but nothing is said about the black
retired police officers killed during the riots–nor do we hear of the black
Christians in West Africa being kidnapped, tortured and killed by Muslims. If
black lives matter surely all black lives matter.
When the irrational rage erupts, then it will come into conflict with other people with similarly irrational opinions who are equally angry, and when that happens revolution begins to roil, and since there is no recourse to truth because “Truth” has died long ago, the only way for the conflict to be resolved is for the person or party with the most firepower to win. If two insane strongmen fight there will be no reasoning, no discussion and no dialogue. There will be no discussion because discussion can only be based on a shared assumption that there is such a thing as truth that can be discovered. If both parties do not believe in truth and have stopped believing the silly nonsense of “you have your truth and I have my truth” then the only outcome is violence and the only resolution is the dominance of the strong over the weak.
Oremus.
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